Silenced
by DreamerofCurses
Summary: Rendered mute from a fight with Karai, Leonardo suffers a revelation about his father.


Alone in his room, Leonardo sat in the darkness, seeing only by the light coming in from under the door. The candle before him was a single shadow against the gloom, and he hesitated in lighting it. He didn't want the rest of the world to exist, not yet. The wound was too fresh, and the pain alone would have taken his voice away.

He shouldn't have been up yet. His healing had just begun. The bandage circled his neck just above his collar bone. A hint of blood colored the cloth where the stitches held his skin together, where his vocal chords had been severed.

Karai's blade had missed, but the effect was the same—Leonardo was silenced.

He struck the match, touched the flame to the wick. The glow burned brighter, spreading a circle of light around the floor that didn't quite reach him. Then he blew out the match...and paused.

That was his voice from now on.

A puff of air, shaped briefly in his mouth to form consonants.

If he tried, he could sound out a 'yes' or 'no' with the ghost of vowel sounds, speaking in barely audible, breathy whispers.

He threw the match aside and stared at the candle. Watched it burn steadily without flickering.

He shouldn't have been up yet. He'd only taken the knife yesterday. They all expected him to rest and sleep and hope that, by some mutagenic miracle, his voice would return. That he would rise back up like all the other times he'd been hurt, comatose, bloodied and mangled. They pretended that the wound in his throat was nothing more than a brief inconvenience.

In his heart, he knew something had changed.

He always changed.

From the outside, his injuries always seemed to heal and go away, but on the inside, he felt where he'd been permanently altered. Not broken but bent a little. Saki had nearly killed him, and Leonardo had returned in pieces from that, slowly putting himself back together. Scars crisscrossed every part of his body—too slow, too clumsy, too weak. And now he would carry this final shame on his throat for everyone to see.

He'd always suspected that he would die in battle, sure that he'd die in pain with a sword running through. He'd been prepared to lay down his life at Splinter's behest.

Now he was afraid that life might be long—months and years and decades of silence.

The door pushed a little wider. Quietly, seeing that his son was awake and out of bed, Splinter came in, closing the door behind himself. He nodded once in approval at the candle, sitting opposite of him.

"Your brothers worry," Splinter said. "As do I."

Leonardo couldn't look at him. He gave a small, soft shrug.

At seeing that, Splinter let go of a sigh.

"You must, of course, not try to speak," he said. "To rest. Hopefully to heal."

The bitter laugh made no noise.

"And," Splinter continued, "if it will not return, then to speak through actions. To speak through your blade."

Leonardo tensed. How could he even think of returning to the fight? He couldn't tell his siblings where he was, couldn't give orders, couldn't call for help and couldn't assure them that help was coming. Without his voice, nevermind leading them—he was nothing but a liability. And yet Splinter did not seem to realize this.

"There will be a reckoning," Splinter said. "Saki has taken so much from us. Our clan, our chance at a normal life. Now Karai would lead the Foot to do the same. We must stop her before her ambitions grow too large."

...and what was too large? Leonardo looked up at his father. Splinter's gaze burned with inner fire. Calm, outwardly at peace, but—on the inside—burning so hot that Leonardo flinched from it.

Splinter put his hand on his son's shoulder.

Leonardo felt it scorch not on shoulder but on his throat.

"You must rest," Splinter said. "Your brothers will take your vengeance."

Who would lead them? Raphael, blinded by righteous anger? Donatello, who shied away from decision and froze in the maelstrom of a thousand variables? Michelangelo—his joy corrupting into malevolence?

He felt choked, and not by the wound on his throat. For how long would Splinter seek this vengeance? How long would his brothers continue the fight?

Until they were silenced.

Stumbling to his feet, Leonardo stepped back from his father as if retreating from a forest fire. His father's anger would not blow out. It would burn and burn until it burned everyone around him.

"My son...?" Splinter said, reaching out.

Leonardo felt the wall at his back. He shook his head once, feeling the stitches pull.

He'd once been willing to lay his life down for his father's revenge. He was not willing to live for it. And he was not willing to see his brothers similarly destroyed.

But when he found his brothers, heard their worried admonishments to return to bed, to rest, he had no way to communicate. No way to make them see their father's devouring anger. With Splinter quietly coming toward them, his stern look resting on his eldest, Leonardo could only turn and face him, arms out as if to shield his brothers from their father.

His father's fury was so overwhelming that Leonardo thought he might be able to scream after all.


End file.
